Monday, February 02, 2015

Author AMA on Reddit

Well, I had no idea what an AMA was until a week or so ago. Apparently it is this:About Science Fiction AMAs

AMA stands for "Ask Me Anything." AMA threads on Reddit are basically an online interview where Redditors can ask questions to the writer or artist who made the post. It provides a way to interact with fans and the general Science Fiction community at large. Sometimes an AMA post is scheduled to coincide with the release of a new book or film, so the discussion is mostly focused on the new work. AMAs may also deal with a specific event and have multiple interviewees available for questions and comments.

AMAs are usually posted in the morning and run for a few hours on a single day. Some AMA-hosts are available to post replies all day long, but when time is short the thread is posted to set up the discussion, and then replies can be made when they return later in the day. That allows questions to be posted while the AMA-host is offline, and other Redditors can upvote popular questions to make it easier for the host to focus on popular topics. The AMA forum provides a very easy and direct way to connect with fans interested in the host and their work.

So, I'll be doing an AMA on Wednesday 4th February at 11PM EST which is 5PM here in Britain. How it works i.e. whether you have to have a Reddit account to ask me questions and how you get to the page where I'm doing this AMA I don't know. I'll add to this post later as I find out.

Update Zebra Matt on Facebook has helpfully supplied some detail: OK, so at 5pm GMT you create your post on r/sciencefiction, and it's just like creating a post on a forum so you'll be able to grab the direct link and post it about.If someone wants to ask you something they need to have a Reddit account but setting one up is as easy as signing up to anything these days, and they can be totally anonymous, in case that's an issue for some people.

After you create the post, folks will do one of two things - post a question or upvote someone else's. Over the course of several hours this will result in a list of questions prioritised by majority voting. It is also possible to downvote, and by default posts with a low score won't show up. And it's also moderated manually, though they just deal with infractions of the rules.

Then you come back a few hours later and reply to the questions!
I guess this means I can't post a link to it till I start...